Sauveen: Sorry, I read my e-mail out of order. I asked
you what you concerns about typing were in my last
e-mail. Then I read this e-mail where you state your concerns.
We want to specify our operators now, i.e., in DASL 1.0, right?
So, we have to describe what the operators return, and what their
operands are, right? If we eliminate all description of typing,
we loose the types of literals and properties, the type returned
by an operator, and the types of the operands the operator requires.
Then, when we want to put these in later, it would seem
we would have to do it in an way that is not upward
compatible. Plus, we probably have to specify which
mixtures of types are simply incorrect (e.g., 3 > "cow"),
and what coercions can and should/must be performed
(e.g., 3 > 4.0 coerces the integer 3 to the floating point number
3.0, or not). All that is left that we can specify is the number
of operands an operator takes, and maybe some literals.
Personally, I would like to take a shot at least partially
specifying typing information, and see how people
like it. I might not be able to specify it completely,
but I'd like to try and see how far it seems reasonable to go.
(We don't want to do something incompatible with
possible future XML extensions.)
I'll try to float a proposal soon, say within the next
few days. I've been very busy recently, and I haven't
even managed to read all the DASL e-mail, let alone
all my other e-mail. Maybe we can come up with
something that makes some sense for DASL 1.0.
I agree with you that we should try to avoid dependencies
on new XML features if possible, since that would
obviously put our schedule at risk.
Alan Babich
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Saveen Reddy (Exchange) [SMTP:saveenr@Exchange.Microsoft.com]
> Sent: April 16, 1998 5:45 PM
> To: 'www-webdav-dasl@w3.org'
> Subject: RE: DASL ID 3 Apr: is XMLDATA normative for DASL?
>
>
> I favor avoiding specifying a typing system in DASL for now (in spite
> of
> what I wrote on 8.7.6) because typing is still a big open issue for
> XML in
> general and to sidestep the problems taking it (or ay specific typing
> scheme) as a dependency might cause. I propose simply addressing how
> typing
> might affect searches for now (keeping in mind how this might vary
> greatly
> over servers).
>
> Not specifying a typing system can be problematic as well; I'll
> address that
> in a soon-to-be-written post to the list.
>
> -Saveen
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Davis [mailto:jdavis@parc.xerox.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 16, 1998 10:42 AM
> To: www-webdav-dasl@w3.org
> Subject: DASL ID 3 Apr: is XMLDATA normative for DASL?
>
>
> Can we (should we) incorporate the XML DATA spec as normative (e.g. in
> 8.7.6 and 8.8). When will it be finished? Could this cause us
> problems?